ORLANDO, Fla. — Bright House Networks customers are getting increasingly angry over Internet connection problems that apparently have been plaguing all of Central Florida.
Most of the customers reporting the problems to Eyewitness News first noticed them Wednesday.
Many complained that Bright House wasn’t doing enough to notify its customers about the problem — which in some cases prevented Google and its popular services from loading — and left customers spending time trying to troubleshoot their home networks, even though there was apparently nothing the customers could do to fix it.
“I can rarely get my Gmail to work lately,” Lorraine Armstrong wrote in an e-mail to Eyewitness News. “I’m relieved that I’m not the only one, but I want to know what’s going on.”
When WFTV.com broke the story Saturday, we couldn’t find any information on Bright House’s Web site notifying customers about an outage, so we left a voice mail on Bright House spokesperson Sara Brady’s cell phone seeking comment. Additional attempts to contact Brady Sunday afternoon were returned by another spokesman — after we updated the story on Sunday’s evening edition of Eyewitness News at 6.
“Some Bright House Networks Road Runner Internet customers are experiencing intermittent problems accessing various websites,” Bright House spokesman Brian Craven confirmed in a statement. “The issue is a result of off-network congestion. BHN engineers are working to resolve the issue.”
Craven could not give a time-table on when the problem would be fixed. The statement also confirmed that no determination will be made on customer bill credits until the issue is resolved.
Customers from throughout the viewing area have been calling Eyewitness News and posting comments complaining about the outage that seems to sporadically affect certain Web sites.
The Bright House customers said some Web sites will load while others, including Google and a Volusia County newspaper’s site, won’t load at all, or will only load after several minutes. When the viewers switched to their cellular Internet service, the problem went away.
After getting those calls Saturday, we tested the Bright House Networks Internet connection ourselves with a laptop computer. Some Web sites would work, but two that viewers complained about would not. When we disconnected that laptop from Bright House and connected it to a Verizon cell phone, every Web site worked fine.
Customers who spent time trying to troubleshoot the problems at home were especially upset Bright House didn’t do more to tell them that there was likely nothing they could do but wait.
“Now, I am going to look into alternatives for internet service. Any suggestions?” one viewer commented.
“I’m glad it wasn’t my computer, but instead Bright House,” commented another.
Others expressed their dissatisfaction with the customer service they received when calling Bright House techs to try and get the problem fixed.
“Oh, it’s your router,” a viewer who builds computers for a living said he was told. He believes the problem lies with a technical DNS issue with a Bright House server.
“DSL is around the corner,” he added, referring to the alternative high speed Internet service offered through phone companies.
Eyewitness News will stay in contact with Bright House officials and provide updates on the situation.

(Source: WFTV.com )